Shosho and babu (grandmother and grandfather)

Friday was the last day of the gathering 2010. We invited the guardians of the students to join us for a few hours, get to know us and share their views about the sponsorship program with us. Many came. And they came from far. I was really moved when I saw those old grannies and grandfathers coming to the venue. Most of the guardians are widowed grandmothers and they have no chance to retire. In many cases they lost all their children due to HIV/AIDS and now struggle daily in order to feed their orphaned grandchildren. Most of them never had the chance to go to school. I saw only one old grandfather who was able to read and sign the document we gave out. Other guardians are only a few years older then the supported students. Child-headed families are nothing rare here. The older brother or sister simply has to step in and take responsibility at a very young age. One boy still has his mother. He was accepted into the program because she is terminally ill. Imagine, it was her boy who got the award "Best performing boy 2010". You should have seen the proud smile radiating on her sunken face!
Awards were not the only thing we gave out. The students also received the promised revision books and were definitely very happy to have them. The books belong to TaC, which means that the students have to look well after them and hand them down to the next generation after one year.
It was such a wounderful time we had with the students, the local committees and the guardians. Three days of learning, sharing and contributing. The students surprised us with several performances on the last day: two poems, one TaC-song and a short drama about how hard it is for impoverished talents to access education. The shy students of the first day turned into a cheerful bunch of promising young people overnight. It was not all too easy to let them go...

Mentorship workshop 2010

The long awaited annual gathering 2010 took off yesterday! We gather the students at one of our cooperating schools for a three days meeting in order to get to know them, bond with them and have them experience inspiring role models. All students came! Yesterday's key note speaker was Jack from ISMAT (International school of Medicine and applied technology). The students sure had many questions concerning careers after secondary school! It's good they start making up their mind - there will be 22 candiates next year and it is high time to find a solution for them. The students got also highly inspired by Jared from Tembea Youth Group, who taught them the basics of entrepreneurship. They then had to come up with a business idea and work on it in groups. Later that day, I challenged the students by requesting them to compose a song for Teach a Child, write a poem, tell a story or play a sketch.

Today the students received a training in public speaking, listened to an inspirational speech about academic excellence and received valuable advice on boy-girl relationships. Our days are packed and long, there is almost no time to rest. But guess what I heard tonight after a late supper? When I passed by the students' dorms I heard many of them singing. The students were actually rehearsing the TaC-song they will present tomorrow! Now, I really can't wait to hear it...

How to transform phones into books

When I visited Switzerland in late September this year, many of you greatly supported the work of Teach a Child - Africa by donating equipment, such as scanners, a laptop, flash drives and mostly: mobile phones. I agreed with the donors to sell whatever is not needed for the work of TaC. After bringing most of the equipment to the field during the second mission in October, I was left with five quality mobile phones. But how would an obvious foreigner sell them on the local market? I didn't know the answer to that question until I started my 4 weeks training in Monitoring and Evaluation at AMREF. During the last week of the training I asked the most vivid class mate to assist me in selling the phones among the group. What a marketer! In only a few hours he sold all the phones and one flash drive for 19'000 Kenya Shillings! This is the equivalent of 150£ or 240$! Last Saturday I went to town in order to buy revision books for our students. With the help of our project-coordinator who happened to be in Nairobi, we purchased revision books for all the form 3 and form 4 students! With the money left, William and I bought three scientific calculators to award our best performing students during the annual mentorship workshop which will take place from the 15th to the 17th of December.
We are still fundraising for more books and more calculators. Kindly visit the current fundraising event on betterplace.org:

http://emailinvited.betterplace.org/groups/simone-haeberlis-spendenaktion

Giving revision books to our students will make them so happy! By now I interviewed most of them and there was not a single student who did not ask for books. Would any of us deny water to someone who is thirsty?